


Saturn Feasts Before the Morning (Devouring Hansel)

by grizzly_bear_bane



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Rising (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bondage and Discipline, Cannibalism, Dom/sub, Emotional Manipulation, Hallucinations, Impressionable Will, M/M, Memory Loss, Murder Mystery, Photographic Memory, Possessive Hannibal, Revenge, Teen violence, Will helps Hannibal to catch the killers of his sister, Young Hannibal, Younger Will
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 13:51:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grizzly_bear_bane/pseuds/grizzly_bear_bane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Roman mythology, Saturn cannibalizes all of his children out of fear that they will someday overthrow him. </p>
<p>In the beginning, Will doubts if Hannibal could ever be that ruthless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saturn Feasts Before the Morning (Devouring Hansel)

**Author's Note:**

> Yay! Finally--I write something that, if it ends in tragedy it will actually make sense! XD
> 
> Inspired by Hannibal Rising and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Will and Hannibal set out on a hunting trip, and only Hannibal knows that they are hunting. 
> 
> If you haven't seen Hannibal Rising....you *might* want to just for a bit on context, but really, all you have to know at this point is that Hannibal is sixteen at the orphanage, Will is younger. The rest ought to be in here, sooner or later.
> 
> So enjoy! Comments, critiques, and suggestions are greatly appreciated!

**1955:** **Savoie near the French Alps**

The radio was broken.

That was the only explanation Will could find as to why he was outside in the woods behind their hideout, without boots, without a coat or even pants. His bare feet disappeared in the heavy snow as he walked.

Hannibal wasn’t there when he’d woken up again. It wasn’t that Will was afraid to be in the old cabin alone. He _was_ , but…

Hannibal would always return smiling and smelling strange, strange enough that Will’s head hurt and his pulse grew erratic, sick in chest and gut.

He didn’t know where the older boy went off to or how long he’d waited for Will to fall asleep before venturing off; he deferred to Hannibal enough to be content not to ask. Did Hannibal ever sleep himself? More than anything, Will always woke up on those mornings with immense guilt for his own rest. It wasn’t _his_ sister whose killers they had to find. He could stay up as well, with Hannibal, and work harder for him, but then he also couldn’t refuse Hannibal when the boy put him in their bed and tucked him in, made him close his eyes.

Will remembered now. Firewood. The fire was burnt out and the wood all turned to ash. There was a great mound of chopped wood stacked high near the cabin, however. But that was what they needed; he would be useful today and start a fire while Hannibal was gone. He would be pleased.

And yet, Will turned around and couldn’t see the cabin anymore, he’d walked so far away. He wasn’t afraid of getting lost; Hannibal had a knack for finding him. Maybe that was the real reason why he was out here in the snow, his hands tucked under his t-shirt for a taste of warmth, his boxers torn on an outstretched tree limb with grasping fingers.

He stared in the direction of where he’d come from for a long time until a branch snapped behind him, the sound echoing from somewhere over the little hill.

Hannibal would return to him, he would realize that Will was gone soon enough and appear and Will would be able to breathe again without this tightness in his chest.

He reached the clearing over the hill and paused once more, awed by the stag on the other side of the snow-covered patch.

Hannibal once said he suspected that Will had a beast inside of him. That one day Will would let it run free. He would grow tall and have strength, a voice conceived to make demands, and a stride like a hunter. That Will would be a hunter.

He saw nothing of himself in this majestic creature, he saw Hannibal. He saw…blood on its antlers, dripping now, blood dripping from its mouth, exhaling great breaths into the frigid air like locomotive steam. It roared like a lion. His vision blurred.

Will blinked and the beast was normal again, simply standing tall and dominant over this clearing. He stepped forward. The beast stared back. The torn scrap from his boxers was caught in one hooked, sharp antler.

The stag turned its head and looked over Will’s shoulder. It took a step back and spun, running off into the shadows of the trees.

“What a shame, Will. That could have been your dinner,” Hannibal’s voice drifted from behind him.

Will's feet were bloody though he wasn’t wounded. The blood trailed red from where he stood to a large puddle under the man on the ground. Hannibal was crouched over him with a scalpel from his medical bag. His black leather gloves shined with so much blood.

“Care to join me for my picnic,” he asked, polite as ever, removing his loves and extending his hand, inviting Will to sit near.

He wanted to run away, should have, but he obeyed at once. His happiness to see the older boy outweighed all else. It was an unhealthy new habit, he knew. 

Sitting closely he watched Hannibal remove the man’s heart and put it to his lips like a plump orange slice.

Will’s stomach twisted in that familiar way, his own heart strangely quiet even as the panic bubbled inside him. He closed his eyes, opening them when his back felt cold snow seep through his shirt. He was stretched out beside the body, Hannibal’s face was smiling over Will’s.

Will was hard. It sent a ferocious blush to his cheeks that only deepened when Hannibal kissed his face, their bodies touching nowhere else but Will’s skin was on fire. “Why?” He surprised even himself when that sliver of clarity escaped through the fog of his mind.

“Why not?” The Lithuanian smiled mischievously, fond as always of Will’s constant shyness and need for quiet, careful words. “I am a hunter, Will,” he observed. “I am the bringer of death behind your sleepy eyes, am I not?”

Will shook his head, unsure of this question.

Hannibal frowned and nodded his head until Will corrected himself and nodded too. “You trust that I protect you, yes?”

“Yes,” he nodded with enthusiasm now, making Hannibal smile again.

“This man wished to hunt me. Too bad for him. He doesn’t understand that there can only be one hunter and that which he hunts. He tried to hunt a hunter.” He chuckled, amused by the dead man's obvious blunder.

“You killed him.”

“Of course. But you already knew that, you already know so much. Listen to what your body is telling you Will. Humor me, please? What does it say?”

“It says… that you’re a monster, but…” He shook his head again. He hated always feeling as if he was so far behind. Hannibal's grasp on everthing was so clear and commanding. Will could barely keep up.

Hannibal straddled his hips, taking his face in a gentle hand. His thumb stroked the younger boy’s throat, caressing over his quieting pulse. “But I am, little Will. Follow me into the forest more often and you will see,” he soothed. “I am the Devil, and I make men crave nightmares over the reality I bring them.”

It didn’t make sense but Will offered his neck to more soft touches when Hannibal's asked until those fingers tightened suddenly, Hannibal’s grip firm when he turned Will’s head to look at the body beside him.

He eyes opened to the corpse whose face was no longer a stranger’s but his own.

His own corpse, not fifteen and skinny but older, bearded. Behind broken glasses his eyes were tired and searching, even in death.

Hannibal chuckled softly over him, biting another sliver from the organ in his hand. “I always knew that your heart would be the sweetest, my love.”

Will opened his eyes against the pillow, wrapped up in a warm quilt and heavy blankets. But his feet were still cold.

“Some day,” Hannibal’s voice was low behind him, stroking his tangling hair, “You will have to share with me what happens in your dreams, Will. They don’t ever seem very pleasant.”

Will remained quiet under the blankets but he turned, already missing Hannibal’s touch when the boy stretched and made his way back over to the pan sizzling on the stove across the room. He wanted to ask Hannibal where he’d been, if he’d stayed the whole night this time, if they’d woken up together like they used to in the boy’s home.

He was distracted by the smell of food. His empty belly growled loud enough for Hannibal to glance back with another teasing smile for Will.

He remembered the search for firewood in his dream, but the fire blazed as warm and bright as ever this morning.

But those boots drying on the hearth weren’t his, nor were they Hannibal’s.

+

**Lecter Castle, Lithuania, now a Soviet-run orphanage. Three years earlier.**

All the boys thought Hannibal mute, perhaps driven to silence by whatever traumas he faced during the war as a boy, or possibly demon possessed, or shy, or a time bomb? Hannibal Lecter was no less a boy surrounded by superstition. His silence only fueled those flames. He had no friends, no enemies, he just…was. And to Will, not knowing where a boy stood here could mean trouble. Even more trouble than—

The door swung open. The three boys who entered the tiny room were far scarier, their threats _real_ , compared to the Hannibal Lecter fairy tales.

Will buried his face under the thin blanket on his cot, pretending to sleep, even his thoughts chilled to a halt when the older boys got too close. They sat on their cots and the bunk above Will’s talking loudly of American girls and how they differed from Lithuanian ones, even though Will knew none of these boys had ever touched a girl. Where would they find one here?

“I wonder if Mr. Lecter ever fucked Mrs. Lecter in this room, huh? What do you think her pussy was like,” one said, blowing out the last candle in the room.

Will could open his eyes now without them seeing. He wished he were already asleep.

The others laughed and conjured up fantasies. The air in the room grew musky as the boys took turns under their blankets with the pair of Mrs. Lecter’s silk stockings. Will wondered if Hannibal knew that his family’s heirlooms and photographs were traded around like collectable marbles.

He buried his face deeper in his sheets, the bunk overhead groaned whenever the large boy in it moved. He hated them, wished he could have a room with boys his own age, or at least boys who didn’t shove their gross desires at him and then freak out when his weren’t the same—or even existent. Will had yet to find anything that made his body stir, let alone something that would drive him to soil his sheets like they did.

 

Hannibal flipped through the pages of a worn book filled with insect illustrations. He loved the drawings of butterflies best. He wondered, in his lone corner of the library while boys burned torn pages in the fireplace across the room, if a butterfly could survive missing one of its wings or if that wings were injured. And if so, for how long.

He watched the small American boy enter with a book already in hand, his fingers gripping the binding, protectively, with excitement perhaps to be reunited with the story in its pages. This boy wasn’t a butterfly, or a mantis like Hannibal. He wasn’t quite sure yet just how the boy fit into the social hierarchy here.

He was younger, only just a boy, and the way his eyes grew wide behind his glasses as they drank in the words on the pages, Hannibal could tell that there was still innocence there, in the boy’s heart, still hope. Perhaps he longed for parents to return that never would, or that _someone_ would come here to claim him, take him away, like all the younger boys did at first. Judging from the attention he drew even as he sat to himself provoking no one, the boys here were intent to crush that hopeful spark as soon as possible.

The other boys stopped burning pages, their attention now on the American. Hannibal watched the scene unfold.

“Hey, sissy boy,” one whistled, but Will ignored him in spite of the red creeping up his ears, “Koenraad said you cry in your sleep like a little baby every night, huh? You Americans boys are scum.”

More took an interest. Will couldn’t ignore them any longer. They were surrounding him, trying to take his book.

“No, don’t touch that!” It surprised even Hannibal when the boy yelled in the larger one’s face.

He was smacked. Hard. Lost his grip on the book and did cry when it was tossed into the fireplace to burn. They weren’t done with him yet. One boy broke the string on his trousers, threatening to humiliate him with a spanking. His eyes darted to Hannibal’s corner, pleading.

Hannibal didn't know why but he responded.

One boy saw him move and shouted, “Karapetkov, watch your back!”

The boy tightened his grip around Will’s neck, watching Hannibal stand and step forward, his face blank as always. “Stay back, freak! I’ll tell the dean!”

His silence was more threat than any words one could convey.

The boys backed off but Will’s attempts to struggle free did nothing to dislodge him from Karapetkov’s grasp. The bully challenged Hannibal and laughed when he made no second step forward. He turned his attention back to Will. His arm drew back, hand balled up into a fist, ready to strike—

Hannibal moved lightning quick, snapping that arm back, destroying Karapetkov’s elbow. He watched the large boy clutch his arm, wailing in pain. Very much like a crippled butterfly; fragile and useless without that wing. His friends must have thought so too. They dropped Will and stepped back, panicking.

Everyone scattered but Hannibal, the bully, and Will, who stared at Hannibal with open wonder.

The dean for their hall ran in, a boy not much older than Hannibal. He was yelling at Hannibal but kept his distance. His threats faltered, fear and anger battling in his posture when Hannibal didn’t acknowledge his presence, only continued to stare at Will.

Finally Hannibal glanced at him, blinking and then dismissed him. He watched the bully get carried away to the infirmary, eyes like a wolf's still hungry for the taste of blood. 

Will was amazed. The dean had power, he could punish Hannibal any way he liked and yet…even he knew his title gave him little power over Hannibal Lecter.

+

Will wondered over Hannibal for days. Why had he intervened? Why get a beating and punishment? Will lost sleep trying to figure out how someone like Hannibal, someone rumored to be the son of the Devil incarnate for heaven’s sake, would go out on a limb when he didn’t have to, when it looked as though Hannibal barely cared.

Perhaps that was it. Maybe Hannibal didn't do it for Will at all. Saving a boy, wasn’t that the perfect excuse for lashing out? No, that couldn’t be it, or at least, not all of it.

Oh how Hannibal must feel living here. No wonder the older boy stayed to himself; how would Will feel if his childhood home still housed so many family pictures, so many memories, and yet this house was no longer Hannibal’s. It belonged to the Russians now. This room where Will slept, the corridors where Hannibal surely ran up and down as a child just eight years prior, he could no longer call this place his home. Moreover, to see how the other boys behaved with so much disregard for the tapestries they tore or the carpets they stained. What could Hannibal do but remain silent, watching, waiting for another moment to visit his pain on another soul?

Will resigned himself to the fact that once again he would not sleep this night. Tonight, the other boys in the room had a picture of Hannibal’s mother and another of her sister-in-law from Japan. Both were now scattered on the floor forgotten now that the boys slept.

He took a deep breath and crept out of bed as quietly as he could and retrieved the photos.

There were dirty fingerprints on their edges but he crawled back into bed with them, hid them in his pillow, but changed his mind, needing someplace he knew the others wouldn’t look. He eased his book from under the bed and tore off a blank page from the back and folded the pictures in it before stuffing it down the front of his underwear. He blushed immensely, though no one else was awake to see him.

It felt exhilarating to do something so bold. His roommates would be pissed but they would never know what had happened. Will felt…powerful, michievous. He smiled and turned on his side, surprised when sleep at last arrived.

+

Hannibal was being punished again.

Really, the fact that anyone here would test him after so many of these incidences was astounding.

He had found a book about mammal anatomy in the back of the library. Its pages were filled with illustrations of cows, dogs, tigers, and so many other animals, their bone structures, theirs nervous systems. He had been in the process of drawing a copy of a bull’s heart when the dean told him to go to bed and turned out the light.

This particular dean was not planning a return to his post once he was out of the infirmary. It would take time for him to adjust to the crutches.

All Hannibal wanted was to finish his book.

He sat in the cellar on an old mattress, a candle lit by his side illuminating the junk and broken furniture cast around the floor and shelves. He was too tired to battle any nightmares so he stayed awake, thinking of the mammal drawings.

He could feel his anger still rolling and curling up and down his spine in waves. He wanted to find a way out, find a way to sneak into the infirmary, find the dean, rebreak his leg.

Hearing the bone grind and snap filled Hannibal with an unfamiliar emotion. Happiness, much like breaking that other boy’s arm in the library had done. He wanted to feel that happiness again. There was also the sight as well as the sound of the bone breaking. He’d touched the bone when it tore through the flesh, its color such sharp contrast to all the red—

He lunged forward and his hands encircled the boy’s neck when he stepped out of the shadows. He let go when the American dropped the lantern on the ground in his fright. Hannibal moved quickly to put out the fire before the whole cellar could catch.

Will was struck dumb with fear. Hannibal’s face, so bright in the firelight _was_ truly the devil’s. Now, however, in the dim light of the candle on the floor, he looked human again. Will blinked several times, took a calming breath and tried to remember why he’d snuck down here.

“I’m…” he started, clearing his throat when his voice cracked. Hannibal only continued to stare, waiting. “I’m—My name is Will. You helped me? The other day. Th-thank you,” he muttered to the ground. When he looked up, he caught Hannibal’s eyes glancing behind him. He turned to look too, saw nothing at first but soon understood Hannibal’s curious gaze. “I slipped in through the tunnel. Here,” he pointed, taking Hannibal’s wrist to guide him to the hole in the wall, but Hannibal wouldn’t follow.

“Did you… You knew this was here,” Will tried again. Of course Hannibal would know that there was a tunnel in his family’s old castle. “I have something of yours. I saw some other boys with your family’s things and I saved them for you.”

This got Hannibal’s attention. He stepped forward, expecting Will to have those things here with him but instead he turned and climbed back into the tunnel. Hannibal didn’t hesitate to follow.

The dirt passageway only took them a few feet outside of the cellar. Will snuck them both back in through a narrow window on the first floor. His hands were shaking.

Hannibal found this smaller boy to be very peculiar. Of course, what must this boy think of Hannibal in return? He was terribly shy; that much was clear. The boy held his shoulders and arms tight to his body as if expecting Hannibal to break one of his bones next, however, if the boy was leading him into a trap the night might very well end that way.

The boy slipped a key from his pajamas and unlocked an old heavy wooden door. It was one of the guest studies if Hannibal remembered correctly.

Will was suddenly embarrassed and regretted bringing Hannibal here. A part of him didn’t want the older boy seeing what he'd hidden, but Hannibal had already moved him aside and stepped in. Will closed the door behind them, his face red with building embarrassment.

The click of the door shut barely registered to Hannibal. This boy, Will, an unlikely ally, had clearly been hard at work since the last time they'd seen one another. He was amazed by the stacks of books, the boxes of photos, letters, even clothes that had been left behind when his family fled the Nazis years ago. The corners of the room were cluttered with large portraits and hatboxes, small sculptures and even postcards from his aunt and uncle, and a tiny doll for—

“Mischa,” the name tumbled past Hannibal’s lips in a whisper, his heart twisted painfully. Her portraits were scattered in piles of paintings everywhere but this doll… She’d been unable to take it with them in their hurry to safety, to their deaths.

In this moment, Hannibal's eyes were opened, a purpose filled his body, his soul. He would avenge her. He _must_. There was never any reason why he should stay here, a ghost in his own house, not when hs tormentors may very well thrive elsewhere. No, out there, there was blood that needed to be shed, there was justice. He had work to do.

Will stood near the door, trying to make himself even smaller when Hannibal turned back to him. His eyes were wide, nervous as if Hannibal would mock him for hoarding these possessions, saving them, protecting them from more harm.

He flinched when Hannibal raised his hand to touch his chin. There had never been a time when he’d seen Hannibal touch another and it not end in pain. Still, he didn’t move out of his reach. Hannibal let a shred of fondness touch his eyes, a tiny smile creeping up. He was pleased with Will's work.

“Thank you,” Hannibal’s voice was clear but, Will noted, eerily void of personality.

Footsteps echoed down the hall. Will moved to speak but Hannibal pressed a finger to his lips until the noise in the hallway died down.

“The hall monitors will come back around a second time before retiring to their posts. You can sneak back down to the cellar then, when they’ve passed,” he offered the older boy, his heart racing at the thought of them getting caught.

Hannibal’s eyes swept the room again. “Thank you.” His voice still blank though his eyes were alight with a fire that made Will's heart beat faster.

He was unsure of what it meant. What he did know, however, was that he’d finally done something good, something right. He returned Hannibal’s smile when the boy crept past him out the door, without making a sound.

+


End file.
